Memoirs of a Geek
by GotchaYouLilDirtbag
Summary: It's the far side of the end of the world and I'm going down. I have to find somewhere to hole up and some good people that'll have me. So far I've found nothing but trouble and I think it's just about too late for me. I don't know what to do. (OCxmain cast, season 3, There will be M rated language, violence and more I am sure). THIS IS NOT A DEATH STORY.
1. Chapter 1

Pas

Memoirs of a Geek

By GotchaYouLilDirtbag

Summary: It's the far side of the end of the world and I'm going down. I have to find somewhere to hole up and some good people that'll have me. So far I've found nothing but trouble and I think it's just about too late for me. I don't know what to do. (OCxmain cast, season 3).

Hope you all like this one. It's going to be a multi-chapter story, set in the first half of season 3, with the main characters coming into it in a few chapters time. I am not American so please excuse or correct (whichever strikes your fancy) any words/phrases/terminology that are incorrect.

Chapter 1

_I'm going to die. _

This is the first line of my memoir. I. Am. Going. To. Die. SHIT. I underline the sentence. I am so fucking angry with myself the pen skids into the paper, ripping a black tear through it and the next two pages. After all the fucking shit that's happened this is it. I am alone, in a barn, stinking, starving, in pain, silent with no one else for company but the stupid ass horse that's killed me.

_FUUUUUCCCCCK!_

That's underlined too. Twice. I'm going to need a new book to write in if I keep up this underlining-in-anger shit.

OK, ok, ok. Calm. Calm. Get control… Get control. No need to aggravate the walkers clawing and moaning and rattling at the barn door.

I've discovered, now that I know I am going to die, that I don't want to go out without anyone knowing what happened. I don't want to be another anonymous corpse, vanishing into rot, unknown, unremembered… That's probably self-centered, narcissistic or whatever, but it's a gut burning need that I have and why the fuck can't I indulge it now that my number is up on the far side of the end of the world? There's no one else here to give a shit except that fucking horse and right now I wish it nothing but ill anyway for what it did. Maybe that's why I have locked the fucker inside with me dying and all?

So, here goes. I'm going to start with what's just happened and see how it goes from there.

_It's the end of winter. The chill is receding: no more sleet or snow, no more ice around. The first pinprick size buds are just starting to show on the trees. I can hear more birdsong in the mornings too. It's funny how I register these things now. Before the end of the world I needed the local DJ to tell me when the first day of spring was and the only birdsong I heard were pigeons that flocked around the building where I lived because someone kept on throwing seed out for them. I barely looked at them back then. I hardly heard them above the traffic and my iPod. Now, birds are my iPod, they are my music and my lifeline to sanity. And I am glad they are returning before I exit. I'd hate to go out in total silence._

_OK, back to what happened. _

_I have been on my own, haunting the back roads of this, wherever it is, dodging trouble wherever it raises its head. The last of the people I was with got killed a few days before I reached this place. It was just plain and simple bad luck really. John and I had been raiding a house and missed the walker hiding under the bed in the children's bedroom. Seems a kid had died under there and the walker had woken up and just stayed put for some reason. Maybe it was remembering the fear the kid felt before he died? In any case, John Hudson (a history teacher from Atlanta that used to go scuba diving in his breaks, and a really good man (it's important to write these things down for someone to read one day)), went to sleep in the damned room and woke up with the kid eating on his arm. Damn… I don't want to think about it but I think I owe it to John to put something about it in this memoir. _

_John was such a brave bastard. He put the kid down right away, but then tucked him back into his childhood bed. He was plumping the goddamn pillow when I came busting in, axe raised. There was blood running out of a kiddie bite mark on his forearm. Oh shit, I can't describe the feeling seeing that and I really don't want to relive it, so whoever reads this will just have to understand. So anyway, we sat down in the kitchen and I am ashamed to say that whilst he sat there like Rambo, I bawled like a baby. After a time we went to the lounge room where the pale winter sun was brightest and the overgrown garden was visible. He took the couch; I took the arm chair. We talked about family, friends, times passed, and then we broke out the pills, enough to drop an elephant, and he took them with some whisky we found in the liquor cabinet. And that was that. I used his icepick to make sure he stayed down and buried him under the bare thorny rose bushes in the garden. I tried to remember some words that should be said over him, but I couldn't remember any and, in any case, I think God (if there is one) has already decided where we are all going to end up and has already put us there. _

_Then I left. Left the house, the city, the county. I just drove away into the oncoming winter. I think I just left what was left of my life. I wasn't thinking. I was in mourning for everyone who had died, for John my last good friend, and for myself too. I was alone. I wasn't thinking…_

_My car ran out of fuel on the edge of a forest a few days later, and I had to abandon it and walk. That had been a damn near fatal thing. A small group of walkers found me pretty quickly and so within about an hour of leaving the car I had lost my supplies, my jacket, my axe and my rifle. It's appalling how fast grieving for another can give way to something much more unfeeling. Within those few minutes I had gone from getting by to going down and all I could do was run. So I did. For miles. Through the forest, across some fields where I was lucky enough to attract more attention and more pursuers, back into more forest and finally, when I could barely go another step, on to a farm. I managed to get myself across the electrified barbwire fence (I actually don't remember how) before I got bit and fell to the ground gasping for cold frigid air. I remember my mouth, nose, throat and chest aching with how damn cold that air was. The walkers behind me, moments behind me, chest slammed the fence and got stuck. Electricity jittered and jerked their rotting carcasses, and the steel barbs pinned them as effectively as fish hooks, so that all they could do was moan, shiver and wave their arms at me. Just as well since I was like a landed fish myself. I think I must have blacked out for a moment because when I registered things again, the walkers were limp along the fence and there was gun smoke in the air. Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck. I felt like crying. I think maybe I was. _

_"You bit?" I managed to roll my head around to see a worn out old man in worn out coveralls staring at me. Staring hard. There was no amity in that stare, just a question: did he need another bullet?_

_"No."_

_"Sure?"_

_"Yep." I showed him my arms and waggled myself around, too damn exhausted to do much more, but he didn't make a move to force me to do more. Instead, he grunted and chewed on his lip, and scratched the side of his mouth where the dried cold-reddened skin was prickled with white stubble. The finger he used was stained and scarred like worn-out leather; knobbled and set in a crooked line. When he moved it to scratch he had to bend it from the knuckle. In his other hand, grasped hard and stiff like a rabbit in a hawk's claw, he held his rifle with his finger crooked over the trigger. The gun was aimed somewhere at my stomach and my life was in the balance. Again._

_I studied him while I waited. I do that now, since the apocalypse. I study people all the time, trying to find faster and faster ways to get at their intentions before things get fatal. This old man was OLD, but old in that sort of way that just makes a person hard rather than frail. He looked like something carved out of leather that had been beaten, left out in the sun, rain and wind, worked and beaten some more and then left out again. I did not fancy my chances if I had to run or fight. Though I reckoned I was at least 40 years younger and had been holding my own out there for months, I was no match for the sheer toughness of the man that stood over me. Clint Eastwood would shit himself._

_I waited, until…_

_He suddenly let the barrel of the gun drop, though the hard implacable stare remained. "You kin take whatever you want. You got my permission fer that. But don't you go near the upstairs bedroom. That ain't fer you. Got that?" I stared, totally baffled. "You ahear-ed me?" He kicked me in the leg._

_"Yeah, yeah. Not the bedroom." I said. "What-?"_

_"There's a hoss in the barn. Name's Lil' Joy, after her mother. She's a good hoss. Good an' strong. Don't be mistreatin' her if you take her and she'll do ah-right by you. If you don't take her, I'd be obliged if you'd put her outa her misery. I don't got the heart for that no more." I nodded dumbly, still thinking what the fuck?, but he didn't seem to register me – not really. It was like he was already gone someplace else. "The rest you ken figure out for yourself." His gaze suddenly slipped away to the big two floor farm house I hadn't noticed. I didn't know what the hell to do, but something told me not to move so I lay there in the mud getting lungfuls of frigid_ _walker-rot tainted air and waited. After a long time he turned back toward me, urgent and fierce. "But you ain't to go in the bedroom. You got that? I got your word on that?" He kicked me again when I didn't answer right away and so I nodded. Shit. He considered me once more for a moment and then just walked away. I sat up and stared. He went into the barn. A moment later that rifle discharged and that was that._

_I would like to tell you that I felt anything normal about what happened to that old guy. I would like to tell you how sad or horrified I was that he just walked off and shot himself, but I don't think a person should lie in their memoirs. What I felt was: nothing. I was physically and mentally at my limit, maybe beyond it, so I just got up and went into the house. I found a fire poker in the kitchen and went straight up stairs to the bedroom figuring that he'd left a loved one up there, undead and restless. But when I opened the door I found a little old lady in bed arms crossed over a love worn bible that rested against her chest. Her eyes were shut, and there was a big ol' red stained floral towel over the top of her head and a bandage around her forearm. The air still smelled like gunsmoke. It didn't take too much to figure what had happened, so I shut the door and went down stairs again._

_I ate myself stupid in the kitchen. There was so much food! Even a fresh apple pie. I am now very ashamed to say that I ate that without thinking about the hands that made it, nor the life that was lived probably until that very morning, in this house. I just ate, and then I slept in the old cellar with the door barred. It was a deep sucking quicksand sleep and I had no choice but to give in to it. When I woke it was light still, or light again, I don't know which. There was no way to tell. I felt better, which meant that I felt less like shit than yesterday, but my whole body felt frail and hollow and cold so I stayed indoors and ate and explored the house looking for supplies. To cut a long story short: I started again._

_When I left my old life, I didn't have the luxury of time like I had now. I had to move so fast back then all I got to take was a family photo still in its frame, whatever paltry things were in my pantry (I was one day short of grocery day of all the luck), and a baseball bat. I had to climb out the bathroom window too, which was a bitch to get through, with the dead banging away on my door. I couldn't even take my bike: I just hopped on down the alley way and started running. Haven't stopped really, but now, I could stroll around and take some time. I didn't though. Old habits die hard and I barely stopped to smell the roses. In no time I had gone through that old house (lovely big old farm house, everything in polished wood and high vaulted empty spaces) and brought everything useful back to the kitchen. _

_I had a backpack now: an old canvas one. Into it went clothes, food, utensils, their first aid box contents, matches, toiletries, stationary and the fire poker. I found some tarpaulin and fashioned a weather proofing for the backpack. There were no maps mores the shame and the name of what must be the nearest town, which I found on a yellowed small town newspaper, was of no help to me. Then I was done and I went back to eating. I ate a lot. Have to these days: if it's there, eat it. I also took the time to heat water on the old wood stove in the kitchen for a bath in their old unplumbed claw footed bath. A fucking bath! With actual soap. I stayed in there til I was wrinkled and red raw from scrubbing. Man that was the last bath I have had until this very day and it was fucking awesome._

_After all that I made a careful circuit of the homestead, trying to stay out of sight of the few walkers that were staggering and wandering around the fence line. No good getting them all excited and attracting their friends. There was a chicken coop full of plump hens (I helped myself to the eggs – goddamn, more food! So happy), but no dogs or other animals which was a bit odd. When I finally got to the barn I found the old man in the back stall minus most of his head. I didn't hang around except to verify that he'd done things right and pry his gun out of his gnarled fingers, before noticing the huge brown horse standing in one of the stalls watching me. Lil' Joy. There wasn't a car or truck, just the horse. Fuck. I went outside and found a tractor which was no use to me. I went back in the barn and stared at the horse. I didn't know how to ride. I didn't know how to put the saddle on. I needed transport though so she was going to have to be it, so I went back inside the main house to try to find something to show me how to get her kitted out. There was a kid's book that had some pictures in it and somehow I managed to get her bridle on without getting bitten. The saddle though – forget it. The one time I tried it slid around under her belly and she went nuts. It took me the better part of the day to get close enough to cut it off her. I left the saddle behind. _

_No saddle. Maybe that's why what happened, happened? I don't know enough about horses to know. Shit, that's the thing about this world now: ignorance is hard to fix and it's fucking deadly. No Google or YouTube, no one to ask, no one to rely on, no one to help if things go wrong. You got to know stuff, for real. That's why I have my books. I collect them like I have OCD. Maybe I do have OCD, no book to tell me if I do yet? Hahaha. Anyway, I digress. I didn't have one on horses so maybe that's why what happened, happened? _

_Shit, that's why I HAD my books. Lost them with the car on the edge of the woods. Damn fucking shit._

_I stayed at the farm for about 3 days before I noticed a buildup of walkers along the fence line. I guess they had smelled me, us? Anyway, I couldn't deal with them alone so I left the place before they pushed the fence down. Well, I should say we left: that's me and Lil' Joy; and the backpack of gear, the old man's rifle, ammo, another hand axe (I do like them), and the fire poker I found when I first got there. We lit out at sunrise heading for nowhere in particular, though I was still lying to myself at that point that I was going south to warmer climes where there must be more survivors and hopefully a place for me. Truth is I had no idea where I was, or where I should go, or how to get there. My ass and legs were suffering like I had never felt with all the bouncing around on the horse and I was being randomly herded around by the undead, increasingly large groups of them, and dodging more and more desperate and nasty looking living people, and it was becoming harder and harder to lie to myself that I was making any progress at all in getting anyplace else but lost in the same area. It was getting colder too, and getting more difficult to find shelter and food. Lil' Joy lost weight. So did I._

_We needed to find other people. We needed a place to hole-up. We needed it quick._

_We found nothing._

End Chapter 1.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

_By this time I was getting seriously depressed. It was making me sloppy. I had more and more near misses until 2 days ago when I made a HUGE fucking mistake and forced Lil' Joy into a thickly forested grove thinking that we could hide out in it for a few hours or maybe a day. Instead we came face to face with about a dozen walkers trapped in there, and on my big plodding horse we very nearly got killed. Lil' Joy panicked like she's never done before and I could not control her. She couldn't turn around properly with all the saplings spearing upwards like jail bars, pressing her into a corridor of cold wet twisted wood. She bucked and reared, kicked and squealed like I have never heard an animal do before. She was in mortal terror. Basically she went nuts. There were walkers all around us and with Lil' Joy going mad with fear and desperation there was nothing I could do but cling to her back for dear life. That was when she smashed us both into a big old tree - the only fucking big tree in the whole place just my luck. At the time I knew it was bad for me at least. I couldn't feel my leg at all from the knee down, but there was little time to think too much on it then. I flailed out with my fire poker as Lil' Joy reared and kicked out. We both made contact enough to knock down a few of them and clear a path out of there. Lil' Joy didn't need the plan explained: she bolted. And ran. And ran. She went for miles in a blind panic. So I went too._

_By the time she ran out of steam and sort of collapsed into a staggering shambles of a walk, she was shivering, wet through with sweat and she sounded like a whale clearing its blowhole. I saw a whale at a marine park once and it was nothing compared to Lil' Joy's huffing wheeze. And me? I was in agony. My knee, shin and foot were an excruciating mass of raw smashed nerve endings, so much so staying conscious was a challenge. My mind kept swirling in and out of nothingness. I felt like I was drowning. Drowning, riding a whale…_

_That's when I knew I was going to die. I had no idea where I was, barely any supplies, the weather was still wintery enough for worrying, and now I was going to be crippled long enough for it to kill me either from starvation, exposure or walkers. And I couldn't get off the damn horse. The pain was so intense I couldn't move my leg and the thought of hitting the ground trying to get off was too horrifying to contemplate. _

_Then to make matters worse, if they could be any worse, the horse suddenly shuddered, muscles clenching all at once . I nearly bit my damned tongue in two with the sudden starburst of fresh pain. I heard her blow out one excited snort, felt her surge forwards and…. and then I don't remember anything. _

_I don't know how I stayed on her back, but Lil' Joy took us both home. Home. I couldn't fucking believe it. We were back where we started. I came to on Lil' Joy's back, my hands fisted into her thick black mane, my face mashed to her neck. She smelled like wet blanket, mud and winter cold. How I stayed on her back I don't know. Maybe just survival instinct. I have a pretty good survival instinct. One that I never knew I had until the world started dying. I have survived things that my rational processes tell me I should have died from, but that instinct of mine that has no words only desperation for life just would not stop until I made it. And so I have. Time and time again. Well, until now that is._

_So, back to Lil's Joy's triumphant return to her barn… When I came to, latched onto Lil' Joy's back like cling film, the second thing I registered was that she was moving. Trotting restlessly, swerving and starting. Once again the sea came to mind – it felt to me exactly like she was tossing about on choppy waves. What the hell was she doing? Was she in the water somewhere? Time and time again she brought us back around in a circle. Then was washed back out again, bobbing, rocking and weaving. Then back to again in a big looping arc. The water sometimes pulled on my pant leg, boot or coat. It was the weirdest sensation. We were on a fucking tide. I think I might have been delirious by then. My brain was skimming the broad surface of consciousness and only the movement of the horse kept me from bottoming out again. After a time I managed to pull my head up from her neck and – SHIT! Walkers. Every-FUCKING-where! Jesus holy fuck! We were surrounded. The stink, the moans and gurgling hisses, hit me like a sledgehammer. _

_The fucking horse was trying to get through the fence! She was trying to do it without getting swamped by the half dozen or so undead that were reaching for her again and again. And again and again she somehow got around them, blowing out hard puffs of steam, and went back to a different spot on the fence. She was going to get home if it killed her. And me. _

_Adrenaline brought me back to full consciousness in a snap. I didn't even feel my leg. I punched a face that got too near and it fell away. I fumbled for a weapon before I realized that I had dropped the fire poker somewhere on the way over here and the hand axe was in the backpack with the rifle (poking out of the top) and unreachable. That left me trying to get the fuck OUT of there. I backhanded another rotting face, nearly toppling off the horse. When I righted, I pulled on the reins, swore at the horse and kicked her with my good leg. She jerked around, breasting the fence (no electricity anymore) refusing to leave it, and I lost it totally and slashed the buckle end of the reins against her neck like a madman. That did it and she gave a shrill screech. I managed to haul her around until we could make a run for it along the fence line, leaving those shambling wrecks stumbling after us. Most of the walkers had bunched up around where Lil' Joy had been trying to get through the fence so it wasn't too hard to put some distance between them and us to get away to find a gate. We found one around the corner. Thank god it was a lever latch type arrangement and it was a simple matter to work it up from Lil' Joy's back. We got in. We got the gate shut._

_And there were walkers in the fucking yard. _

_There were three ugly rotted ones. One of them was naked and minus every last bit of its guts, which reminded me again that this, whatever it was, was not a disease like the flu or cholera. Human beings had physiological limits, and someone missing the bulk of their digestive system and having an open belly wound running from groin to ribcage would mean that the body couldn't function. That poor woman must have lost most if not all her blood too. How did the body operate with no blood, no guts and an open wound open to infection? It can't. So this 'disease must be something supernatural. I thought about this a lot in the early days. It shook me up and changed my outlook on everything, because if this sort of magic was real, what else was? So far nothing else (like vampires and such) is, but I think this is sort of enough. I stopped thinking about it after people started getting killed around me. Since then I just think about surviving._

_Anyway, the generators were down so those walkers must have pushed the fence over somewhere, or found a break in it. We had been gone for weeks Lil' Joy and me, so anything was possible. I kicked her again and she juddered forwards, bellowing out big puffs of steam. The nearest safe haven was the barn. We went there. That was a day ago._

_We are still here._

I'm going to stop writing for a bit. My hand is cramping and I am starting to feel less angry and more guilty about whipping Lil' Joy's neck like that. I drew blood. I can see it from here. Shit. Oh shit…. Poor fucking horse. It wasn't her fault that I've smashed up my leg and all she really did was run home. Poor ol' beast. I'll make it up to her somehow. I will. With that thought I rally enough to look at my leg, finally. Since I fell off the horse and lay crying, let's not lie about it, in the straw of the barn I haven't had the guts to look at it. I was afraid of what I'd see and what it might have told me about how I was to die. Like some bad break and infection, septicemia and horrible fevered death. But now I have to look and so, with gritted teeth, I do.

My leg looks straight under my jeans, and there's no blood, but the material is taut at the knee and I can feel the inside walls of my boot pressing on my ankle and foot like a second skin. Ok, so probably not a hideous bone-through-skin breaks, but bad nonetheless. If it's not broken its badly badly bruised and maybe lots of soft tissue damage. I try to flex my knee and sharp slice of pain pierces the space behind my kneecap. The whole joint feels stiff. OK, so maybe something like a football injury? Shit. I don't know. I could slice the pants and boot off, but I am not sure if that's the right thing to do. Something tells me that would be an all new sort of pain. One that I couldn't fix or deal with. Instead I stare at my leg and listen to Lil' Joy breathe and shuffle around looking for what feed she can scrounge, and a little further back the walkers snarling, scrabbling and pushing at the barn door. I don't know how many are out there. The old man kept the barn in good order and there is not even a single knot hole to peep through.

How the hell am I going to get out of this one? I have no idea. No idea. Every notion I have fails immediately when it calls for me to walk, climb, run or even crawl. Even waiting to recover is out since I have very little food left and the stagnant water in the old horse trough is not enough to keep both Lil' Joy and I going for much longer. If I am going to do anything it will have to be before me and the ol' girl get too weak. It's funny, up until a moment ago I was all set to die here. Now that old survival instinct has kicked in again and it's driving me to find a way out of this mess.

Every way I look at it there is only one thing left for us. We are going to have to open the doors and make a run for it and just hope that there aren't too many walkers outside to swamp us. It's not a good plan. It fucking sucks. We are likely going to die. But maybe not. It's the 'maybe not' that always keeps me going. OK then, let's do this. It hurts like fuck to get up, but get up I do. Somehow, I do it.

I hobble over to Lil' Joy and pat her long bony nose. She lets me do it. I think she's forgiven me for whipping her and that makes the guilt worse. I HAVE to get her out of here. At least I have to give her a chance. The bridle is still hanging where I put it and getting it over her head and the bit between her soft bristly lips is no trouble. Poor ol' girl is near clapped out. I ruffle her mane and without waiting a moment more I lever my backpack back on and thrust the axe through my belt. I only cry a lot when I haul myself aboard her broad bony back. My knee isn't a knee anymore; it's just a space where agony has taken up residence. When I can stop I sit up straight and look at the barn door.

"Once more into the breach, old friend." I whisper into her ear. It's a dramatic thing to say, but I think a person's probably final moments should allow such a thing. Lil' Joy's ear twitches. I let myself imagine that she understands what I said. I pat her twitchy flank. Then I use my good knee to nudge her forwards towards the barn doors.

My plan in simple. I will lever up the bar across the door and trot lil' Joy quick smart back into the depths of the barn. We will wait until the walkers push the doors open which they surely will – I can hear them on both sides of the door where they have been for the last 24 hours. Then we will charge them and either get through the doorway or go down. Either way this is going to be it. I have to do it. For her. For me. I have to.

"Once more Lil' Joy. " I say again and nudge her forwards. She doesn't want to go, but slowly I get her to move. She can smell and hear those undead fucks and I can understand why she doesn't want to get any closer, but I am firm with her and we get there. "OK ol' girl, we're going to do this. This is the last thing I'll ever force you to do. The very last thing. After this it's your way all the way. I swear it. Ok then, let's do it."

And we do. We fucking do! The bar comes up slow and heavy in my hand and I nearly fall off the horse getting it up and away from its resting points, but I get it free from the door. It lands heavily and Lil' Joy snorts and skips sideways to avoid being hit. That was a good move. The doors immediately start caving inwards under the pressure from multiple pairs of rotting hands. She needs very little encouragement to move fast back into the barn. As she goes I feel the adrenaline kick in and my leg is suddenly very little bother. I pull the axe free as we move and I wheel her around to face the stinking group of about 12 walkers coming right at us. They are already half way down the floor towards us and Lil' Joy dances in place with fear. Her ears are flat to her head and I swear I can hear her teeth grinding the bit and big heart starting to jackhammer. I dig my boot into her ribs and smack her hindquarters with the flat of the axe. The shock propels her forwards. We are fucking going to do this. We'll do it. I see the pale winter-spring light ahead of us, framed in the doorway. I keep my eyes on that, I don't want to see anything else.

We charge.

Impact. The walkers slam into Lil' Joy's broad chest as she bolts through them. I don't even know if they even had time register what we were doing we were moving that fast in that little distance. We smash through them, scuttling them. I keep my eyes on the door as it gets closer and closer.

We are outside. Holy shit. We're outside! The walkers are inside. We did it, we did it! I can't believe it. I can't –

I'm going down! What the FUCK!

Everything swirls and tiIts and I hit the ground. Oh my god, what's happening? We were doing it, we were free! I roll over and I'm up on my elbows. Lil' Joy is staggering, limping about 5 metres away. I can see her head jerking, see her breath pumping from her nostrils like a steam engine. She's stumbled over something and thrown me. Crap!

I can't get up! My leg. Oh my god. It's fucked. I can't move.

The moans and snarls are gaining ground on me. I look around to see that the walkers we left in the barn have realized that there's nothing to eat in there and are coming back out. I can't get up. My fucking leg is totally gone on me.

Oh shit, oh shit –

Then a truck hits the small herd of walkers. A truck! What the holy fuck? I watch in total disbelief as the bodies fly, literally fly, on impact and land in the cold mud far away. Doors slam. There's two guys out of the truck laying waste to the ones they didn't hit. A woman is going after the ones they did hit. I watch her, dazed. She has a machete and she knows how to use it. I watch her take out at least 4 without hesitation and with efficiency that speaks volumes. What the hell?

"You bit?" A loud voice close to me makes me jump. I raise my axe, only to have it wrenched out of my hand. There's a man's face in mine, close to me. I can smell his breath – he's been eating macaroni. Macaroni? How'd he get Macaroni? My brain can't process this. I can't… Suddenly everything is blending, morphing, tunneling into pain and shock and I can't… I can't deal… I'm going down. This is it. I'm out, finished. I can hear myself blathering…

"Look after my horse. She's a good ol' girl. Called Lil' Joy. Named after her mother…"

End Chapter 2

Should I go on? Some of our main cast have just made their entrance. I promise!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Waking is a slow process. I feel like I am coming up from a peat bog: emerging from the silent dark, rising, rising into the cool brown waters that will eventually buoy me back to the sunshine.

"What were you thinking T?" There is a fierce male voice somewhere nearby.

"I was thinking that there was a person, a live person, needing our help. And I gave it." Macaroni-man was speaking now. In that same soft/hard direct voice I'd heard at the barn. "She would have died if-"

"That's beside the point and you know it! We don't know who this woman is? We don't know who her friends are or where they are? They could be coming for her right now! She might have been bait. For god's sake…"

"I don't think so." A woman's voice now.

"Oh and how do you figure that?" Fierce man demands. "Hm? How do you know that?"

"I was THERE!" The woman snaps, angry and fierce herself. "I was there and I saw –"

"Hey, come on people." Yet another man now. "Come on-"

"No Glen, this was foolish. Foolish! She should have been left at the farm until a decision was made." He declared. Then: "Daryl, Glen, Maggie you're with me. We'll scout out the road between here and the farm to check for any friends that might be looking for her. Carl, Carol take the watchtower by the gate, if anyone comes up to the gate while we are gone, if it's more than one: shoot them."

I float in the brackish silence that follows and feel strangely disconnected. I find I can't seem to focus my thoughts on anything, but I don't really care enough about that to try to do anything about it either.

Time goes by…

I open my eyes as I wake again. It's a simple as that. And I am lying in a narrow cot in a - what is this? A cell? A prison cell? There's graffiti on the bunk bed above me that's not fit for reading. Yes: a prison cell. I'm in a prison. Oh shit…

"Good morning." There's a man sitting by the bed, white haired with an equally snowy beard. He's watching me with a slow measured gaze that could be kindly, or maybe he's just being polite in that slow genteel way they have down these parts. Again I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

"Mornin'." I answer automatically. My voice is raspy and catches in my throat. I cough. The old man (old con?) lifts the back of my head with one hand and gives me some water with the other. Sweet clean water. How long is it since I have tasted that?

"What's your name?" He asks when I am lying down again. Once more that slow polite conversational tone, but I know this is an interrogation. I pause before I answer, trying to get my muggy brain back into gear. I feel like I have slept for a week and maybe I have. My knee is only a dull, if strong ache, which is a damn sight better than before. But is it a good thing that they kept me alive this long? Is it a good thing that I have woken in a bed rather than chained to a tree? Am I alive until they get their answers and then it's a bullet, or worse? In the end I decide to answer. I don't think I have much choice. If I don't I don't know what's going to happen next, but I am sure it will be a lot less pleasant than this cell.

"Sarah."

"And where are you from Sarah?"

"Atlanta." The old man looks like he's thinking that over, so I chance to ask a question. "Where am I?"

"Now, that's not for me to say -"

He was about to go on, but there's suddenly a new guest in the little cell: a middle aged man, tall and lean, with a scruffy beard and a harder than concrete stare. Behind him I see another man with dark shaggy hair and a flinty aspect. He looks about as friendly as the bearded man who entered first, but unlike him this one's gaze is calculating and fixed upon me like the only thing he's thinking of is how he'll kill me. Oh shit, where have I ended up? Is this a prison run by the inmates? Oh my god. They've probably eaten Lil' Joy. I hope it was a quick death. You poor ol' girl.

"All right. Our people have seen to your leg. We don't think anything is broken, but you've done a lot of soft tissue damage. We're treating that as best we can." Bearded man has taken the old man's chair. The old man is using crutches to limp out of the cell. The hawk like stranger steps aside briefly before resuming his position in the frame of the door. I get a glimpse of what he's brandishing. What's that he's got? A crossbow? What the hell? Who the hell has a crossbow? My heart rate is going up and I just pray that the fear doesn't show too much. "I'm going to ask you some questions. If you lie to me I'll know it and this conversation will be over." He pauses and I don't need a translator to understand that was a threat. "If you withhold information from me or if you don't answer a question: this conversation will be over. And you will keep on answering my questions until I am satisfied with the answers or this conversation will be over. Do I make myself clear?"

I nod. I don't trust my voice.

"Where are you from?"

"Atlanta."

"How did you end up at that farm?"

"I.. I don't really know." I reply, hating that my voice is betraying me, but the man obviously doesn't like my vague answer so I rush to clarify. In my near panic, I am running on gut feel and instinct tells me to ride it out with the truth. All of it. "I was with a group of people back in Atlanta when - It - started happening. We made it out of the city before they started killing everyone. Before the bombing.

"There were about 20 of us back then, but, things… happened. There were two of us until just before winter set in real good. He got bit. Now there's just me. There's always someone left in the end I guess. This time it's me."

"Go on." He prompts.

"Well, I ran out of gas a on the edge of a forest somewhere, somewhere. I don't know. By the time I got there I didn't know where I was. I didn't have a map of the area. And there were walkers around. I ran for it. Made it as far as that farm."

"And you've been there ever since." My interrogator prompts, but all of a sudden I feel that's an odd thing for him to say. Something tells me this is the acid test. He already knows the answer to this question.

"No." I answer. "We were attacked-"

"We?" He demands.

"Me and my horse. Well, she's mine now. Was mine. That farmer gave her to me before he killed himself. It was the damnedest thing. It seems so bizarre now, but I didn't think too much on it at the time. I was running, I was going to die, but I got across the fence at the farm and the old guy shot the walkers behind me. He saved my life. And all he said was that I could take the horse, and whatever else I liked, but that I wasn't to go in the bedroom in the house. Then he killed himself in the barn. I took the horse and some supplies and left. There were too many walkers sniffing around to stay. " I pause, suddenly feeling so guilty about eating that fucking apple pie like a godammned pig. I didn't even use a spoon or plate. I just hogged in. That poor woman upstairs must have made it just the day before. I suddenly have an image of a sweet little old lady, oblivious to the horror going on outside her little remote farm, wearing an apron and dusted with flour. She's rolling out the dough, thinking only about making something nice for herself and her husband on that cold wintery day. And then she's bit. Probably never really understood what was going on. But he did. I reckon he knew. At least he knew enough to shoot her in the head so….

I am such an asshole.

"His wife was upstairs. Dead. She'd been bit and he'd taken her out you see." I can hear the unshed tears in my voice. It makes me suddenly furious. "They work that place all their lives and it ended like that. Shit!" I am such an ASSHOLE. I really don't care what beardo and his hawk do to me right now. I deserve it. I feel sick. I feel like I am going to puke and pass out and die from shame all at once. "Did you eat my damn horse? Did you kill her?" I demand right back at him.

"Fuck the horse!" Hawk suddenly says from the door. Each word is delivered with a pugilist's fervor. "You expect us to believe that you made it through the winter, in the woods, all by yourself? What are you: five five, five six? 120lb soakin' wet. Pushing 40 if a day. Just how fucking dumb do you think we are?" He jerks the crossbow in my direction. "Where's the rest of your people? How many are there?"

"Dead!" I say, spitting out the word in a wild verbal slap of my own, and the venomous snarl in my voice surprises me and sounds brittle in my ears. "They're all dead. There's just me. I told you."

"Bullshit!" The man retorts, taking a step into the room.

"Fuck you! Did you kill my fucking horse?" It's not bravado that makes me bark back at him. It's a weirdly nervy mix of self-disgust and fear and jittery exhaustion.

"All right, that's enough!" The other man commands at us both and Hawk stops, but I can see him poised on the balls of his feet ready to lunge. "Daryl." He says and his voice is quiet, respectful, like the tone I use to settle Lil' Joy. He turns back to me. "He's right. It doesn't seem possible that you've survived out there, alone, all winter. " He pauses, staring at me. Calculating. He's deciding what to do. I brace myself for the inevitable ratcheting up of the interrogation. I'm still furious at myself, at everything.

"Did you kill my horse?"

"No, we did not. She's at the farm, secure in the barn." He says, staring at me, thinking. My heart sinks. There's nothing I can say that he should believe. How can I prove that I am alone?

"What do you want me to say?" I plead. "I survived. I don't know how, but I did. We stayed out of the way, even if it meant we starved some days, we ran, we hid, we stayed quiet. It was fucking miserable. But, Lil' Joy, she brought us home. I fucked up big time you see, and we were ambushed by walkers. I don't know how many, a lot. She took us back to her barn. If she hadn't done that I'd probably be dead by now. We were back a day before your people found us."

He looks at me, nods vaguely, but the steely look he has tells me that he's not done yet. He's thinking things over. Again, I don't know if that's good or bad.

"You'll stay here." He finally says as he gets up and makes for the door. I watch him go. His deputy Daryl, takes a deferential step back and the bearded man pauses in the door. "One of our people will bring you food and more water."

Then the cell door is shut, locked, and I am alone.

Time passes slowly alone in the cell. I can't hear anything at all, which only serves to make me more antsy. At least my leg is looking better. With the strapping in place, it reminds me of a time long ago when I wrecked it playing ball and the doctors strapped it up like this. Before there were walkers. A better time. So, though it still aches like fuck, just seeing it bandaged up like a professional has done it gives me some cheer back. A bit anyway. And I got to remember that Lil' Joy is alive and in her home. That's another tick in the half full check box.

I can't move all that much, but I manage to get up onto my elbows and look around. It's a small room all right, lit at the moment only by the daylight coming from a bright patch of glass and mesh high on the wall at the back of the room. There's just enough space for these bunk beds, the chair and a useless toilet and sink. The plastic jug of water and cup are on the floor by the bunk bed, within reach of me. And everything is shades of grey. A bit like my mood at this point really.

I lie back and try to calm down.

Out of the fryingpan, into the fucking fire. Chased by walkers, saved by passersby, only to end up locked in a prison that's probably being run by the fucking prisoners. I hope to hell they don't leave me here to rot. Strike that, I hope they don't drag me out of here and give me over to their cellmates. I'd rather starve to death in here than that…

There's a clang at the door and I look up with a start. There's a woman there. The cliché 'willowy' comes to mind as I watch her standing at the door with a tray. She's tall and slender with short cropped greying hair. Like my previous visitors, she's not smiling. There's a boy with her, looks to be in his mid-teens and it's him clanging the door as he unlocks it. He's not smiling either.

"Brought some food and more water." The woman says as she enters. She has a weary droop in her back as she bends to put the tray within reach of the bunk and steps back without another word. The boy at the door says nothing, but I see his hand is resting lightly upon the butt of a handgun that's in a holster strapped around his waist. Looks like a damn kid playing cowboy, but he has a hard, bloody look to him like no kid ever should. There really are no children left in this world, I think.

"Thank you." I say to the woman. Old habits, old formalities, old meaningless rituals, die hard. Even in hell. And I feel my lips quirk in a quick weak smile. I can feel the pull of the muscles and it's a reminder that it's been a long time since I had anything to smile about. The woman nods. For a moment I almost try to start a conversation with her, or even the boy, but my gut tells me that that would not be a good move. What could I say that wouldn't just sound like a calculated play for sympathy, a connection with my captors and eventual release? I do wonder though what a woman and a boy are doing here in this prison. While they do look lean and raggedy, like we all do these days, but they don't look too beaten down like one might expect for a child and a woman thrown to the dogs in a prison. And with that gun, it's damned obvious that that's not what's happened to the boy. I really want to ask, but I don't.

The boy locks the door, without a word and they both leave. I sigh. The silence settles over me again. I swear I can feel its weight on my skin like a blanket. That's when I smell it. Macaroni…

I realize I have fallen asleep, despite everything, only when I am woken by the sound of keys rattling in the door. I blink and lever myself up on the bunk. It's the bearded man. He looks… well… exasperated. And pissed off.

"Can you walk?" He asks. "Can you get up?" I am still muzzy headed and so instead of responding I just sit up fully and try to move my leg so I can put both feet down on the floor. It really really hurts, and the bandages have made my knee joint stiff so I have to shuffle my butt forwards on the bed to get far enough forwards to get my bad foot to a point where it can touch the ground. So far so good. The fierce man suddenly grabs my by the upper arm and hauls. I can feel his callouses through the thin cotton of my shirt. The world tilts. I'm up. Woah, head rush. I blink it back.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"Outside. We have a… problem."

"And I can fix it?" What the hell can I fix? Is that some sort of code for 'now we have to kill you?' Well, fuck that! I didn't get this fucking far, fight this hard, do the… things… that I've had to do just to go like some dumb animal to the slaughter. I freeze up and he knows instantly what I am about to do.

"Don't even try it." He says flatly. "There's no way you could take me, and even if you did, you'd never make it out of the cell block.

"I'm not going to hurt you. We just... need your help. Come on."

Then he's propping me up, rather than dragging me, and as we leave the cell I see that I've been in a long corridor of identical cells. We limp along their length. Ahead of us, the kid is holding a door open. He closes it behind us, locking it, without a word. I wonder then if he _can_ speak. We keep walking a short distance and I can see the exit door up head. The sunlight is like a halo around the jam.

"I'm Rick." The man suddenly says, startling me. "And that there's Carl, behind us." Before I can respond he's opening the door and I am blinded in the sudden flare of sunlight. I blink, tearing up, holding my free hand to my eyes. A second later I see what the problem is and I could fucking laugh. Just laugh.

Oh, Lil' Joy you've saved my life again…

End chapter 3

Feedback greatly appreciated. And yes, that was begging... lol

cument here...


	4. Chapter 4

Thank you everyone who has read this, left a review, follow or fav! So nice of you. Glad you like the story.

Chapter 4

"So you can see our problem." Rick says as we stand in the cool sunshine looking out from the buildings, across the concrete and chain-link fences and down to the grassy expanse that seems to make up quite a bit of the prison in this part. Beyond the fence is forest and an approach road. And walkers. Always walkers. There are a few of them there now gathered, hissing and groaning along the fence, faces turned towards the 'problem' that is running amok just beyond their reach.

Lil' Joy. She's here!

For a moment I just look and take it all in. That horse, my friend through this past winter, nostrils flared, ears flat to her skull, and neck arched like a Victorian prancer, is doing her avoidance dance up and down the vast green lawn; her great shaggy hubcap hooves thumping large divots out of the grass. She looks good, despite the lack of proper food and sleeping rough; or maybe she just looks that way because I'm so damn glad to see her. And I am so so glad. I sneak a look at the man, Rick, beside me. He's mostly let go of my arm and I am resting the bulk of my weight on my good leg. On the other side of him is the boy, Carl. Both are watching Lil' Joy with some frustration, and it's maybe a sign of our times that that expression has actually lightened both their countenances considerably.

I turn back to the fiasco down below. There is a young man I see now, black haired and fast on his feet with a wiry athletic grace, that is totally misreading the horse's body language and throwing noose after noose at thin air as he chases Lil' Joy around the entire lawn. There's a young woman down there too, with a messy tangle of brown hair gathered loosely at the nape of her neck. She's waving her arms around, trying to herd Lil' Joy towards the man with the rope and trying to block her escapes. She is unfazed by Lil' Joy's attempts to evade her or push her considerable rump in her face. It's clear she's no stranger to horses. It's also clear that she's fighting laughter and not succeeding very well.

On the sidelines, the elderly man from the cell is fidgeting on his crutches, his face like thunder. I can see now that he's minus a leg from the knee down. Every few seconds, usually when the young man with the rope misses yet again, he slaps the battered hat he has in his right hand against the crutch. He's shouting something stern and biting that I can't quite make out. His raised voice has a peculiarly deadened sound to it. No one quite yells these days, I guess.

And as I take in the scene, I think: these aren't inmates, these people are something else.

"Your horse is broken to the plough." Rick suddenly says. "We want to put down some crops and she's perfect for the job. Save our backs some. Speed up the work.

"But," he nods at Lil' Joy. "She don't seem to have taken a liking to the idea."

I look at Rick while he watches the man down there miss yet again. Lil' Joy snorts and noses the air, her thick neck muscles making her mane shiver. She stamps the ground. I consider my choices right now and don't see that I have but one.

"And you want me to rope her for you." I air the obvious.

"We'd appreciate it."

"Then what?" I ask.

"Then: Herschel down there on the crutches is a veterinarian. He'll look her over, fix any hurts and we'll start making preparations to put down the first crop." He looks at me. I say nothing, but he knows what I am asking. "You'll stay here. We haven't found any sign of anyone looking for you, and your story stands no matter that it's an unlikely one. Herschel says that your leg will mend in time and if you were able to survive all alone in the woods all winter with a horse that big and stubborn, we could use you here."

"Just like that?" I ask, disbelieving. My head reeling a bit, I don't mind saying.

"Just like that." Rick says. I look at him, considering. And I reckon that's who he is: Mr 'Just like that'. Once a thing is decided, that's it. I wonder if he can change his mind just as fast and as finally. But in the end, really, it all comes down to playing the odds, taking tidbits of whatever I can to make it to the next day. So if I disagree that puts him on the spot and I can see only a bad outcome for me, even if all he does is lock me back up in the cells. And I sure as hell can't survive out there on my own, or with Lil' Joy, right now. But…

"Your people don't have a problem with me staying on?" I ask thinking of Daryl and his crossbow.

"Most don't." He says. "The rest will come around." Carl flicks me a measured look right then that is virtually unreadable, but I get the sense he might be one of those not so keen. That is one hardened kid. "Truth is," Rick goes on. "We need to defend this place. Hold it. For that we need people."

"How many of you are there?" I say while testing how much weight I can put on my knee. Ow, not much. I wince, hissing through my teeth.

"Enough." He says carelessly, then catches himself in the evidently habitual evasion and blinks. A small smile tugs at his mouth. "You'll meet everyone in time. It'll be evening meal before too long and most everyone, except those on watch, will be there.

"For now, if you can manage it, we need to get your horse calmed down and away from these fences. We're attracting too much attention." He nods down at the walkers gathered, slavering bug-eyed at the fence. They are gathered as close as they can get to the fuss Lil' Joy and the others are making. There must be about 6 of them now pressed in a knot, making a slight bow in the fence. They look bad, even for walkers. Half chewed up, bearing the scars of endless winter days and nights exposed to the weather, and the rotting process they all seem to be slowly going through. And the stink… I haven't been this close for this long to so many that I have time to register the smell again. It's not something I will ever get used to.

Rick speaks briefly to Carl and sends him on down ahead. The boy runs off, pausing only to wave up to the tall watchtower. There is a man up there, I can see him brandishing a rifle. He waves down at the boy and points his weapon down at the fence line, providing cover as Carl unhesitatingly takes a long metal pole, sharpened at one end, from the ground near Herschel and begins killing the creatures along the fence with all the matter-of-fact-ness of a bored snooker player. I can see him line up the pole, resting upon the chain-link, and then jab forward into the face or head or eye of whichever walker is nearest. Then a tilt of his wrists up ends the pole and the body slides off onto the ground. The walkers paw the fences as he works, open maws dripping in that filthy black slime they all seem to ooze as they bite and lick at the fence, at the boy. He doesn't even take a step back.

Holy shit.

I have seen some extreme things in my time since the end of the world. I have. So has most every survivor. But this is something else. He's maybe 13 or 14 and he's killing people like its everyday news and nothing to get worked up over. Shit. He is very good at it too. He's obviously practiced, and if he is this good, it is both a terrifying and reassuring thing that the rest of them must be at least as skilled and calloused.

I don't have time to ponder more because without another word Rick grabs my arm again and we go down to the debacle that's taking place below us. Carl is almost finished his grisly task by the time we get down there. He's throwing his entire growing mite into each thrust of the pike. So far it's one for one, one stab: one kill.

"Good afternoon." Herschel says as we approach. "How's the leg?"

"Better, thanks." I say and he nods.

"You're horse is reluctant to co-operate. I asked Rick to fetch you to bring her in so that I can examine her. I thought a familiar face might do the trick."

"Sure." I nod. "First thing you gotta know is we spent all winter with walkers clawing at us or chasing us; trying not to get boxed in any place. She's become a might shy of being chased after.

"If you can call your people in, I'll go get her."

And I do. Once the two young people are in from the field, I limp out to my old friend. She's all worked up. Up close I can see the sweat shining, darkening her brown coat with a deep rich varnish-like quality. She snorts at me, muscles tensed, nostrils flared and bellowsing. I stand out there and call for her, using the calmest and most gentle tone I have. She doesn't believe me at first and I can't say I blame her. But eventually I get the first sign that she's loosening up when her ears unpeel from her skull and begin flicking around, catching the sounds of her new home. One eventually fixes, like a satellite dish, upon me. Then it's only a matter of a minute or so and she's made her way over. She butts me gently in the stomach and chest with her big head. The impact almost knocks me flat and only at the last second do I remember to get all the weight off my bad knee before instinct takes over to rebalance myself. She rumbles like a big cat, the sound coming from somewhere deep in her barrel chest, and then abruptly she's calm. I rub her forehead, feeling the stiff straw like strands of mane roll under my fingers.

"That's it ol' girl." I whisper in her ear. "Nice and gentle. Now, I remember the promise I made you: your way or the highway, so it's up to you if you want to go with these people, but if I were you I would. See my busted up knee here? See the bandages. Its feeling better already and that ol' guy over there did that for me. He'll fix you up good too if you'll let him. But I won't force you. I did promise." I let go any hold I have over her. It really must be her decision. As much as I need her as the hook for these people to let me stay, I did promise. And that has to mean something or what's the point right in any damn thing right? I let go any grip I have on her. When she hangs close and doesn't take off again, I nod in Herschel's direction and he nods back, he looks surprised.

"Remind me to have you on hand whenever I have a skittish patient." He says when he approaches, slow and careful. He has a rope in one of his hands and is holding the crutch around it. The old abused wood of the walking aids creak a little as he swings and pushes, swings and pushes, slow and rhythmic, coming closer and closer. The stiff braid of the rope clips the wood with every push. Lil' Joy's ears flick in the sound's direction, but she doesn't move away. She gives a big breathy huff as he stops next to me. "Easy. Easy now." He murmurs as he reaches out a hand to her neck. Lil' Joy lets him touch her. "T-Dog tells me that she tripped coming out of that barn a few days back."

"Threw me." I nod. T-Dog?

"Well, from her little display here, I can see no lingering damage. Lucky." He pauses, frowns. "Some wounds here." He says. He has a hand on her neck. I feel my cheeks burn.

"That was me. Walkers were on us and I freaked out a bit." I say. He raises his white bushy eyebrows at me. I can't tell what he's thinking. "The buckle on the reins tore her up some." Shit. I can't look at him now. Instead I pat her nose, wishing that through the gentleness of my touch I can communicate just how very very sorry I am for hurting her like that. All that winter we had worked pretty much as a team, neither one of us so much as raising our voices at one another, and then I had gone and done this. It was in panic and in response to a very real threat to our lives, but still…

"They aren't serious." His voice startles me back to the immediate. "And they've already healed over." He passes his hand like a feather over the affected area. "They won't scar." He's being kind I realize. And I nod, grateful. "All right. Let's get her secure. Maggie and Beth, my girls, have made up a stall of sorts for her. You're welcome to join us of course; see her settle in. But what I would really recommend is that you get your weight off that leg. She will be all right with us. There is nothing serious about her injuries. She just needs to be fed up some. You both do." He gently pats her and his manner is calm and quiet and soothing. And not just to the horse. But…

"No, I'll come along." I shake my head. "I appreciate what you are doing for her, for both of us, but it wouldn't be right for me to leave her with strangers right away. No offence."

"None taken." Herschel gives in with a nod and a small warm smile. I think he understands.

TWD TWD TWD

It's another morning. A little warmer than the one before it and the one before that. Spring is definitely on the way and I am feeling better than I have in a long long LONG time. I have eaten twice a day since I got here, oh yes I have! I have showered. I have used soap. I have slept in a bed with a blanket, a pillow AND woken to a hot breakfast. I am in heaven. Well as close as I think I will ever come again. Right now, in fact, I am sitting on my own bunk, under veterinarian's orders to rest my leg for a few hours. A real, actual bed. And it's mine.

In my hand is that book of memoirs I started. It was on the bed in this cell when I was brought into the main living area here a few days ago. It was inside my old battered backpack along with my other belongings. Well most of them. It is clear that my bag has been rifled through and my first aid kit, batteries, and some bullets I had stashed are missing; along with my rifle and my axe. Can't blame them for that, though that doesn't make me happy about it. In fact I am amazed that they even gave what was left, back. I mean why should they? They did though and I see it as a good sign that these people still have their humanity intact. I do have my clothes left, as well as this book that I am sure has been read also, which is a comfort. I have a good shirt in there, as well as a pretty cool set of long johns, and it would have been irritating to have lost them.

Memoirs

I have decided to continue writing my memoirs, even if death has been postponed for a while longer. Why am I continuing it? I guess I just like the idea now. It's something real. It is something to cling on to. I never realized how much I needed that until I started writing it out back in the barn. I miss words. I miss books. I miss writing. God, I just miss my old life.

How far I have come from the quiet safety of the library. How far. Outside of the realms of movies, librarians aren't usually expected to have the necessary skillset for surviving an apocalypse. Huh. That would be funny if it wasn't actually, horribly, happening right now. But strangely it does make sense: this geek of the written word had the best arsenal after a gun and a melee weapon: books. Books: knowledge, about every subject known to man and the perfect weapon, the perfect defense, the perfect means for survival. And I had the finest of them right there all around me every day.

I should write this down, I think. This is important. It's so easy to forget the importance, power and need for books when you are at war. War. Yeah. I guess it is. So, in some ways this may end up being like a war diary. I pause in my thoughts, suddenly recalling the cautions of old veterans: don't put anything in the diary that the enemy can use against you. That could be a problem. I am not sure how much information I should put in here really? What happens if somehow this diary gets into the wrong hands? I've seen enough of the sort of nastiness that has befallen many survivor groups. The ones I have seen would attack this place without even a thought, going after the spoils (including the people) and the land. Still, am I being too paranoid? Can anyone be paranoid enough these days? I don't know. Maybe I'll just have to be damn careful to hide this book in between writing.

I stop for a moment and tap the pen on my lower lip. A swell of emotion, of longing for times and people past, suddenly gets me right in the throat and I ride it out, tapping that pen. I miss books. I miss my damn life. I miss everyone in it. I just miss: before. Maybe that's where I should start. That couldn't hurt, could it? Might get things under control again. Ha. It's ironic that now that I am as safe as I could be from walkers and people gone feral outside of these walls that it's the inside, the inside of me, that's now a threat.

I put pen to paper to begin somewhere near the beginning. So, yes, I was a librarian…

_When the… plague?... started, I was a librarian in a modest little community college in Atlanta. It seems a lifetime ago now, but I think it deserves a mention. I guess libraries hardly seem important when your next meal is uncertain and you might be killed at any moment, but they are, they really are. Shit, a library saved my life sure as any well placed bullet or any stroke of luck has since. I should tell that story too. But first I have to start somewhere around the beginning._

_First place I holed up in, after leaving my apartment, was a library. There were other people there as well, hiding, crouched terrified and silent along the isles. I remember stepping over and around them to get at the books. They thought I had gone insane, those people. Quite a few went mad in the first weeks and months so that wasn't really a crazy notion in itself, but I knew I had to get my hands on those books; that if through some luck or fortunate circumstance I was able to survive, that I would need them and that others would come to see that they needed them too. So I filled my pitifully provisioned backpack with books: first aid, survival techniques, basic wood craft, metal craft, introduction to car mechanics; books about weapons, orienteering, astronomy and even some novels. My backpack was 90% books, 10% food by the time I was done. And I got done just before the first walkers busted their way in through the huge front windows. By luck I got out, survived and fled._

_I met others after that. First a convoy of 13 people fleeing the city. They took pity on me and risked their lives to get me into one of their cars as I ran from a small group of walkers along down a street in the outer suburbs of the city. Those 13 people are all dead now. Most of them died from walker attacks, but two were killed by other people, one died from an allergy to peanuts, a woman killed herself and a little girl died from appendicitis. Every death hammered home just how fast, how brutally, and how seemingly irreversibly things were sliding back into the dark ages. Maybe further back even than that. _

_All the trappings of civilization are mostly gone and what's left is barely there at all. One man, Peter Krantz I think his name was, died from eating some old cake we found a week after I joined with his group. Can you believe it? He must have known it was a game of roulette for him to eat that cake, but we were starving and there was nothing else. He ate it and died within minutes for want of a simple shot of epinephrine or a call to 911. Then he came back. Oh my god, he came back. That was probably the most devastating thing that has happened to me so far. Before that we thought we could get infected through a bite or scratch, but otherwise we were normal, untainted. But no, Peter came back without having been bit or scratched, and then he bit his own sons before another one of our group killed him – again. And those boys of Peter's died in fear and agony by the side of that dirt road in buttfuck nowhere crying and screaming for their dead mother and father. There was nothing we could do to comfort them or ease their pain no matter how we tried. A few of the group wanted to kill them, maybe as much to stop the noise as to put them out of their misery, but the rest of us weren't ready for that sort of decision and there was a standoff. Fists, gun waving, some pushing and shoving, some hushed yelling. It tore the group apart. No one left over it what happened, but it had done something terrible and irreparable to our fragile sense of who we were as a group. In the end, when those kids were so far out of it it couldn't hurt anymore the ones who wanted to kill them got their way. And we all went along with it. Me too. We left them by their dead father in the middle of fucking nowhere lying out for the crows. There was no time and no equipment to bury them. And to be honest, no will either. _

_I don't even remember their names now. I am so sorry Peter._

_In a way it was like we all died that day. We finally realized that there was little difference between ourselves and the walking dead. We realized what awaited us all in the end. And we realized that the world we knew, with its safety and surety, its peaceable mundane day to day, was totally gone and could never be retrieved even if every last walker suddenly vanished that minute. It was a devastating blow; a fresh horror all in itself. I think we all felt like we had been visited by another apocalypse. It was almost impossible to take. A woman who had already lost her entire family before joining us couldn't take it and she shot herself during the night when we pulled over to rest. _

_So then we were 9._

_We were 9 for a while. A good long while. Long enough for me to get to know the people in our group as we ran from place to place, scavenging and trying to avoid skirmishing with the undead. There was John who was with me until it all ended before the winter. He had his niece with him then. She was 8 and had stopped talking when Peter, his two kids and that other woman died. She spent most of her days sitting in one of the cars holding her duck toy and staring out the window. When he wasn't doing what he could to help us all survive, John spent all his time uselessly trying to bring her out of herself. Then there was Luis and his wife Lusa and their son Miguel. Decent people, scared as hell like we all were and trying desperately to figure out this new world before it destroyed them. Luis was a mechanic, which was damned useful, and Lusa a waitress. Their son, Mig, was in his third year of elementary school. A good kid too. Nice. Loved baseball. Then there was Frank, a middle manager from some processing company in the north who had been in Atlanta on a training course when the plague hit. He was the one I was most fearful of and for. He made no bones about sticking with us simply for the numbers that might give him protection, but that his ultimate goal was getting himself somewhere safe with or without us. That was his usual threat to get us to go along with his supply run idea, his walker killing 'practice', his raid, his route: follow me or get muscled out of the group. If it wasn't for Peter, John and Luis muscling him back, I think I would have been pushed out long before Peter died and Frank would have gotten everyone else killed very quickly. It isn't right to speak ill of the dead, but Frank was no good. Just no good._

_Then there were two women, both hairdressers from Atlanta. I can't remember their names. I can't remember anything much about them, except for the fact that they spent all their time alternating between utter denial and terror and weren't able to do a great deal because of it. We kept feeding them and protecting them nonetheless. I guess it was like they were our last link to the way things were and that protecting them meant that we hadn't yet become like those undead creatures or like the more ruthless and uncivilized people we were starting to encounter. But they could talk. Oh my god. Could they talk! Endless prattling about hair styles, movie stars and reality TV that irritated and curiously soothed our nerves at the same time. But in the end, after the second walker group attack on one of our camps (where Luis and Miguel were horribly killed) they decided that we were all to blame for what was going on, like we were responsible creating and spreading this virus or whatever it was, and that we ruined their lives and we were the ones stopping them from returning to civilization. It was bizarre, but they were hysterical and quite frankly most of our group had had enough of them. They left us in one of the cars pretty much straight after that second attack. _

_We found what was left of them the next day further along the road and I won't write about what I saw except to say that there are people out in the world who seemed to be just waiting for civil society to fall so that they could live out their warped violent fantasies without comeback. What happened to those women shouldn't ever have happened. Not to anyone. Not at any time. But it did and it succeeded where nothing before had in splitting us up. Frank and Lusa went one way; John, his niece and I went the other. I don't know what happened to the others, but with Frank's gungho attitude and Lusa's inability to hit the side of a barn door with her gun it seems pretty likely that it didn't end well._

_John, his niece Nicole, and I headed totally away from the city, into the country towns where populations were smaller and trouble harder to find. At least we hoped. We found a small town, rather ridiculously called: Smalltown, and bunkered down in one of the many abandoned houses. Then we all pretty much fell apart. I guess it was coming. We were barricaded in, shielded from prying eyes and sensitive noses by layers of stinking mildewing blankets and clothes nailed to the windows, we had food and water and it all just hit home like being brained by a lump of wood. No one said anything to anyone else; we just went to pieces on our own, holding in the noise with armfuls of rotting ragged blankets. It was horrible. I felt so sick. For a time I thought I must have caught some bug. I was vomiting, shaking, felt fevered and my brain felt like it had disintegrated into a kaleidoscope of horror and pain. Horrible, horrible technicolour multi-sensory memories, all higgledy-piggledy with no order or context, raced and slammed through my mind in a sickeningly tilted whirl. I don't have the skill with words to describe that experience, but just take my word that it was terrifying and confusing and I NEVER want to go there again. I was so exhausted too: slipping in and out of sleep and waking until I didn't know the difference anymore. I couldn't get off the merry-go-round. Then a single lucid thought struck out of nowhere: I've been bit! I had been bit and I didn't know it! I was DYING! I was going to turn into one of those things outside the house. I hadn't been bit of course, but that intense and insane thought had me by the frontal lobes and I just panicked. Luckily John saw it and knocked me down to the ground, sitting on me and pushing an old shirt to my mouth to shut me up until I basically ran out of steam and passed out._

_When I woke, I was not myself. _

_ I felt different. Like everything up until now had been a dream, it wasn't real and was already fading from memory. I felt like I had come through some reforging, beaten and moulded into a new shape by the new world. And I was harder, sharper, less… human… somehow. How can anyone see and do what we have all seen and done and not become something less and something more than they were before? I gathered myself, John did too (though he was stronger than I and tears and pacing were all the signs of distress and pain that he ever showed, and that passed quickly) and he was back tending to our poor mute kid whilst I supervised our 'camp' and ordered our provisions. Days passed. We stayed put, watching the undead around the edges of the covered windows and feeling increasingly satisfied that they had no idea we were here and that, perhaps, this might be a place we could stay for a while. John and I even began discussing how we could rid the streets of the undead, or at least rid our street of them and begin to make a safe outdoor space for ourselves. But then Nicole finally came out of her shell. Explosively, insanely out of it. And it was impossible to stop her crying and screaming without suffocating her with blankets and pillows. We even took her down into the basement in desperation to hide the noise. It didn't work. She wouldn't stop and we couldn't stop the uproar seeping through the walls and windows._

_Within an hour we were besieged by a large group of walkers. They were pawing all along the walls and doors and windows. We didn't have a single second to gather anything but my backpack and weapons. John slung Nicole over his shoulder like a sack of thrashing cats and we just ran back into the house out into the backyard. I heard a window smash behind us. And another. They were coming into the house. John could hardly keep his feet in that the corridor with how wildly Nicole was kicking and fighting him, but we made it out into the backyard. It was an enclosed grassy space with a child's swing set, a clothes line, a high wooden fence and padlocked gate, so it was free from walkers but it also meant that we were trapped in it. We had no time to be careful, but John still shocked the hell out of me by flinging, literally tossing, Nicole over the far back fence and scrambling over it after her. I was totally gob smacked and all I could think was that he had left me there to die. But then, of course, his head bobbed up from behind that fence and he hauled me over the side with him. And just in time too. Walkers smashed into the palings behind me, and it sounded like they were tearing their fingernails out trying to rip through the wood._

_We were in another residential street, exposed. More walkers, about four of them, saw us and heard Nicole's shrieking wails. They started their shambling jerking jog towards us. We ran, John behind me this time whilst I lead with a hand axe in one hand and a 3 foot long piece of steel pipe in the other. All I could think of was that we needed to get back around the house to our car. If we were quick enough those walkers that broke into our safehouse might still be in the backyard or milling about in the rooms and corridors and we could get in the car and get the hell out of Dodge become they came back out. I took us down a small path that ran between the next house and the one after that. It would lead us back to the front of our safe house and the car. _

_ I was so intent on my goal that I didn't even stop when the mouth of that pathway suddenly filled up with two ragged torn up female walkers. They shambled at me and I ran at them. I took advantage of their failing thoughtlessness and hurled my book laden backpack at one of them, knocking her down, whilst I smashed the pipe down on the other's head. I hit her again and again, fast and relentless and totally detached. John wasn't in the mood to stop running either and simply leaped over my backpack and slammed a booted foot down on the other one's head. That rotted head burst like a melon under his full weight and steel capped boots, and he just kept running. I put both weapons in one hand, grabbed my backpack by one strap, swung it over a shoulder and raced after John and Nicole. _

_We were just fast enough to get into the car before it was descended upon by walkers left and right. John was in the driver's seat and Nicole was wailing in the back as they clawed at the windows. I took shotgun and we just about destroyed that car's engine and ruined the tires peeling out of there. We kept on going until we got to back to the woods. And it was back to a life of running and hiding, scavenging and (when luck was upon us) catching fish from the streams and rivers. My books came in handy there. We all read them and learned a thing or two about survival in the woods. Nicole slowly recovered, stopped screaming and started talking again, and we headed deeper into the back country searching for a way out of the mess the world was in._

_After three weeks we just couldn't keep the car gassed any longer and something major was going wrong under the hood that we knew we couldn't fix. And so we left it in the middle of the road where it had stopped, doors still open and just walked off into the forest. By this time we had provisioned ourselves quite well once more. We each had a backpack now, we had some preserved food, some fishing line, weapons, rain coats and each other. We went into the woods thinking that we could hike to the other side, come out near another town and see if we could get another car. Then we would start heading north into colder climes where hopefully the walkers would be less active or find it harder to get around. _

_As it was we didn't make it out the other side._

END CHAPTER

Thanks for reading and to all who have commented or followed the story. Thank you.

Thoughts? And should I continue with a little more backstory or get back to the main characters of TWD next time?


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